Green personifies Spurs’ system

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — When Danny Green returned to the Spurs after the 2011 NBA lockout, he took one glance around a Spurs’ locker room overstocked with guards and knew he had his work cut out.

Manu Ginobili was in one corner. Gary Neal, fresh off an all-rookie campaign, was in another. Elsewhere was James Anderson, at the time the team’s highest-drafted player since Tim Duncan.

“I never thought I would see the floor,” Green said.

Flash forward 16 months to a chilly Wednesday night in Minnesota. There was Green, a starter now, throwing in 3-pointer after 3-pointer, threatening a 16-year-old franchise record en route to a career-high 28 points.

Green’s stunning shooting show helped the Spurs salvage a 104-94 victory over the Timberwolves in the first game of their annual rodeo road trip, which resumes tonight at Detroit.

To the 25-year-old Green, a fourth-year pro in the first season of a three-year guaranteed contract worth a little more than $11 million, life still seems like a dream.

“Last year, I was just hoping to stay on the team for the whole year and not get cut,” Green said. “Maybe if I was lucky, I could crack the rotation. I had no idea or thoughts I’d be starting for this team.”

A mercurial player whose streak shooting has earned him the blogosphere-anointed nickname “IcyHot,” Green heads to Detroit on one of his patented upticks.

In the past three games of an 11-game winning streak, Green has averaged 20 points and made 20 of 29 field goals, including 13 of 20 from long range.

With an 8-of-12 performance against Minnesota, Green came within one 3-pointer of equaling the club’s single-game record of nine, set by Chuck Person against Vancouver on Dec. 30, 1997.

For the season, Green is shooting 41.9 percent from 3-point range, tied for 14th in the league with Miami’s Ray Allen, arguably the most lethal long-distance sniper in history.

Green’s story, from undrafted, twice-waived journeyman to starting shooting guard on the team with the best record in the NBA, is one of perseverance.

It is also a fable about finding the right place to bloom.

“I respect Danny a lot,” point guard Tony Parker said. “It’s not easy to come on our team and get cut, and have the mentality to keep pushing and keep pushing. I have a lot of respect for the way he’s kept pushing, and now he’s blossomed.”

Green’s two-season coming-out party is a case study in the value of the Spurs’ system, from the scouting work required to identify diamonds in the rough, to the coaching and patience needed to polish them.

In finding and molding a role player like Green, coach Gregg Popovich says credit is shared between general manager R.C. Buford and his front-office team on one end, and player development coaches Chip Engelland and Chad Forcier on the other.

“We’ve been fortunate to find the guys who fit what we’re tying to do, basketball-wise and character-wise,” Popovich said.

Green is the first to admit his career might have taken a different arc had he landed anywhere else.

With Ginobili on and off the injured list, Neal working mostly as a backup point guard and Anderson now in Houston, minutes have not been difficult to come by.

“It’s pretty easy to fall into place here,” Green said. “It starts with Pop, letting guys know their roles and making it easy to be successful in the system.”

In just his second season as an NBA rotation player, Green is far from a finished product. Consistency is still an issue.

Green’s three-game hot streak comes on the heels of a January in which he averaged only eight points and shot 39.4 percent.

“The next level for Danny is to do that consistently,” Parker said.

Can Green develop into the reliable, night-in and night-out scorer the Spurs would like him to become?